I tell the seventh graders something I learned over the weekend: that when Monarch butterflies go into the chrysalis, the body of the caterpillar does not simply grow wings, or transform as a normal embryo does. Rather, in the first 24 hours in the chyrsalis the body of the caterpillar completely disintegrates into cellular soup, a liquid form. From this cellular soup the body re-forms as a butterfly.
I tell the seventh graders this.
Tsering says, “I want to be the first person who ever went inside the chrysalis, ‘cause I want to see it turn into soup and see if it sparkles.”
****
Sarah comes to me and shows me a book she pulled off our shelves. “Revolutionary Letters,” by Diana Di Prima.
“Look what I found!” she exclaims.
We open it to the inside cover. 1971, City Lights Books.
“Oh, this is some serious hippie and beatnik poetry,” I say.
“Oh yes,” she says. “I read some of them. They are all about things we are talking about now.”
“Why don’t you write some revolutionary letters of your own.”
“Oh, maybe I will.”
***
“Tal, Tal, come see the bathroom. Yared is playing his guitar in there and there are tons of people in there!”
“Tal, for my project, I am going to have a guest appearance. He’s going to be from the Czech republic. He was there during the Velvet Revolution.”
“Tal, I want to do the Industrial Revolution. That sounds the most interesting.”
A student says, over the din of the pounding and breaking of tiles: “It doesn’t matter what others think about your mosaic. It only matters what you feel about it.”
“Tal, we should watch 1984.”
“Tal, can you tell what my image is on my mosaic?”
“Is Yared crabby?” I ask.
“No, he’s happy cause he was playing his guitar.”
“See, Tal, I got my lit response right here.”
“Oh, you’re working on the crossword!”
“Hey, Tal, we already got a half a math problem done!”
“Tell me one thing you’ve learned in the last 24 hours,” I say.
“I’ve learned what fluvial and benthic means.”
“I’ve learned that Kiley loves her sister very much.”
“Tal, my place description is 900 words long. Is that too long? Actually, it’s not 900 words. It’s 950.”
“Hey, Anna, I love your skirt. And, um, I feel like my cheek was punched.”
***
A seventh grade boy bursts into the room.
“Tal. Tal, take me off the Mosaic list. I finished!”
“Okay, you are off the ‘bad’ list.”
As he scampers down the basement stairs he yells out, “Yay, I’m a good boy!”
****
After Rowan’d speech the discussion turns to questions of how to live in the world after something bad happens. The scars that happen to us, little and big, our fault or not our fault, what do we do about that. What place and privelege do we give past experience. How much control do we let the past have over us.
“Up at Annie Nicholson’s house there is a massive sugar maple. Inside it, sticking out about ten feet up, is the handle of a Civil War calvary sword. A soldier came back from the Civil War to his hill farm in Vermont in 1865 and placed his sword in the tree and the tree grew around it. The tree has the power to consume a weapon if we let our weapons go.”
Rider says: “My dad knows a guy who was cutting down a tree. And he kept wearing down chains and breaking teeth off his chainsaw. He changed the chain three times. And then he realized there was an old ski embedded in the tree.”
“So if you let a negative experience stay too deeply in you..what?”
“But those experiences are a part of you. They become a part of the tree.”
“But do we keep the scar of foreign object on the outside where it shows always, or do we grow new beautiful layers around it?”
“You don’t want to forget it. It’s a part of what you know. It might teach you how to live.”
“So the new rings grow around. Maybe there is a bump or irregularity where the event occurred, but the tree will keep growing.”
“Does the tree have the power or keep itself from deforming itself?”
“So you men, how much will can you exercise in your life when some of the things that happen are out of your control?”
“Yes.”
“You mean to say: your sister might be sick. Your brother left and doesn’t say he loves you. Your parents had a fight or got divorced. You were mean to your sister and regretted it. Your grandfather died. You didn’t say ‘thank you’ even though you felt grateful. You promised you would try and your didn’t. You will be sad, confused, angry, disturbed, bewildered. All those
things will happen. Big or little. They will happen every day and every week. Do you understand what I am saying?”
“Yes.”
“So how will we use those things? How do we let them into us and be a part of us but not let them become us. Or, how do we transform those things. Here’s a way of looking at it. Inside any big tree is the heartwood. The heart of an oak. Heart pine. The center, the old stuff, the inner core, the greatest density, the early rings. That is where the soul of the tree is. No matter what happens, the tree exists. The acorn that the tree came from remains in the tree. It will always be there no matter what foreign objects enter. No matter what happens, the tree’s code and essence is embedded in it in far greater proportion than the ski. The ski is a nothing but a sliver. Nothing can really penetrate the heart wood. The heart wood is dense, beautiful, golden with color. That’s the part that is in place and be kept close.”
“The tree has roots and the tree has limbs. It is so much bigger than whatever happens to it.”
Even if it gets struck by lightning, there may be a scar but the tree will keep growing.”
I tell them: “My friend says she won't let toxic things make her live as a toxin; nor will she let the toxins infect whatever is good that wants to live in her. My friend says she will choose how to let the scars become a part of her, only a part of her, and make her great and mighty. My friend lets the beauty she is grow around the knives, swords, or skis that are jabbed into her. My friend believes that the tree she is is so magnificently pure that she can grow, ring after ring, becoming bigger and greater and more fully herself no matter what is thrown at her. My friend decides who she is and what directions she grows.”
*****
It is late on Friday, the last of the speeches.
“Y’all, my favorite car in the train is the caboose. It is the most beautiful car, the red one, with a little tower where the conductors sleep. Engines are grimy and powerful, the freight cars are necessary but rusted and gray, but the Caboose is the most beautiful. As red as the heart of Icarus.”
“And the caboose is where the famous people stand to make their speeches,” says Luke.
“Yes, and now we have the caboose, the last of the speeches.”
In the space of the final hour of the week it comes clear, again, why we have this school; or, I should say, it comes clear what we can do in this school, in any school, when the kids are let out to do the talking.
We give the kids a chance to say what matters. No matter how fluently or fumblingly, how exquisitely artistic or raw; no matter how much poetry or stumbling and um-ing and tears and snot. No matter how difficult, no matter the amount of tension, we have a chance to tell each other what matters. And we will listen. And the kids sitting around the table are listening with all their hearts open at 2:50 on Friday afternoon. The room is absolutely still, the rains in tapping on the roof, it is gray outside, and once again, we are saying to each other as Mother Teresa did: “We belong to each other.”
When this happens, we are living in and outside of ourselves in the best possible way. Lennie shouts to George: “I got you and you got me!” This is his ecstatic truth, and one of the handful of truths that should really matter before death comes. To know someone has got you and you’ve got someone. There is heartwood all around us and in us. Our task is to see it and show it every chance we get.
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